The Muggleborn Diaries
by Chloe Peacecraft
Summary: GWHarry Potter crossover. Hilde Schbeiker has always felt like she didn't quite measure up to her older sister Lucrezia. She's now about to find out that she's special in her own unique, magical way.
1. The Other Kid

The Muggleborn Diaries  
Ch. 1 - The Other Kid 

July 27, 2003 

Dear Diary,

I guess I should start by introducing myself first, right? You're probably wondering if I was raised by wolves, judging from my manners so far. Anyway...

My name is Hilde Marie Schbeiker, I'm 10 3/4 years old (that makes a difference, thank you very much! That's almost 11...), I live on Saltspring Island with my crazy whacko family, and I'm going into Grade 6 in September.

I guess I should start with my looks. I am a runt. I'm the shortest girl in my class, and scrawny to boot. Mom says I'm not scrawny, I'm just "petite", and that there's nothing wrong with that, it's actually quite fashionable to be one, and I'll be so glad for it once I'm grown up and have had kids... blah-blah, blah-freaking-blah. The fact remains that boys call me Chicken Legs, and while all the other girls in my class have started wearing training bras, I'm still (and, for all I know, may always be) flatter than Saskatchewan.

Think I'm just whining? Alright, let's move on to my hair. An unmitigated disaster, that's what it is. You know when they say, "My hair's got a mind of its own?" Well, mine certainly does, and it's the kind that needs therapy... lots and lots of it! In fact, if they made Ritalin for hair, I bet I'd be the poster girl for it. Oh, it can't possibly be that bad, you say? Well, I suppose diaries don't have eyes to judge for themselves, so here are the Cliff notes.

It's boy-short. It's got these freaky kinks that stick out all over the place, no matter how much gel or other stuff I put in it. I tried growing it out, but it just got crazier and more rebellious. Plus I started getting the worst tangles, so that was the end of that experiment. I suppose the colour is not bad, it's a nice shiny black, but that's about the only thing it's got going for itself.

Oh, but I probably have a pretty smile, right? Wrong. Up until two days ago, I thought I did. Then my dentist thought well of messing that up, too. Now, I sport a very fashionable set of shiny metal braces that make me look like the Tin Man's long-lost daughter. My mom and dad say it's only temporary, and that my teeth will look flawless by the end of it. Only two years, they say...Nothing! Never mind that I'll almost be in high school by the time I get to eat a sandwich and not have little bits of stuff get stuck in all the grooves and look really gross... It's not like I'll be kissing any boys anyway... Eurgh. Where did that come from? Boys suck.

Anyway, enough of my self-pity. Otherwise you'll start thinking I'm no different than all those other whiny pre-teens that keep diaries. In fact, I bet you there's a secret underground diary network, where all diaries go and complain to each other about the silly musings of their owners, kind of like a chat room of sorts, only for diaries. What do I know...it's just one of the crazy thoughts that pop into my head when things get a bit too normal. Did I mention I'm a freak?  
Anyway, I'm sure you'll have plenty of time to get acquainted with all the weird stuff that goes on in my brain, so I'm going to leave it at that for now, and bid you a good night. Tomorrow's Monday. Back to summer day-camp. Oh, joy...

***********************

July 29, 2003

Hello, Diary.

I know, it's been two whole days since I wrote, whereas the idea of a diary is that you write in it every day. Right? 

Well, I've been doing some thinking. I know my mom got you for me because she thinks you'd be good for my self-esteem and all that (though taking off those gag-awful braces would help too, but she'll hear none of that)... And I do admit that I started out feeling royally bummed and thinking it was all just a load of horse manure, but after a while, writing it out of my system actually felt pretty cool.

But I can be a handful (at least, that's what I keep hearing), so before we go any further and either of us commits to this relationship, there are a few things that I think you should know. The most important of which is that I'm the Other Kid. 

You have no clue what I'm talking about, do you?

The Other Kid, you know? The one who's not particularly pretty (I think we've established that already), not particularly popular, not an academic and athletic wonder all rolled into one... As opposed to the Perfect Kid, that most diaries probably vie to end up with. Well, if that's what you want, then you definitely have the wrong sibling. In fact, if anything, I'm a step backwards in your diary career (if there is such a thing). Let me elaborate... 

See, my sister, she's the classic textbook example of the Perfect Kid. She's a straight-A student. She's a geek (I swear, the girl's got an unhealthy obsession with space and planets and aeronautics and all that jazz), but she somehow manages to make even that look cool. There's never been a class where she hasn't excelled, or a sport where she hasn't kicked ass in all of her 14 years. Whenever she comes home from school, her friends practically camp out at our house. All of a sudden, we've got half the boys on the island riding their bikes up and down our street, doing all sorts of stunts with their skateboards and stuff, hoping to impress her... Oh, did I mention that she's pretty, to boot?

She goes to this fancy boarding school in Victoria Lake. That's Victoria Lake, Africa, not Victoria, BC. All paid for by scholarships, of course, because we're doing ok, but we're by no means rich, and a school like that would cost just about what my dad makes in a year. At first, when she sent out the application without telling anyone, then got accepted right off the bat, and had to come clean with my parents, I thought she was really going to get it. Apart from the cost, it's a military school that specializes in aeronautics. Fighter-pilot and astronaut training, basically. And my mom and dad are anything but military sympathizers. 

Picture this: mom teaches yoga at the local Holistic Healing Centre (you've got to grow up in Saltspring's hippie culture to know what that is); dad runs an organic vegetarian restaurant where you can get stuff like scrambled tofu and veggie bacon (it actually tastes good, I swear...). Sounds like a granola-flake kind of family? Absolutely. Then throw in the freakishly smart kid who wants to go to military school, rather than use her superior intellect for worthier causes like, oh... saving the whales, stopping clear-cut logging in the Rainforest, plugging the hole in the ozone layer... 

Enough to give any self-respecting environmentally aware pacifist parent a fit, right? That was true for about half-a-day. Honest, no longer than that. I'm not saying that I wanted her to get in trouble, so for once I'd seem like the angel, but let's not kid ourselves, here. If I'd been the one to try a stunt like that, my ass would be grounded until I turned 30. Not to mention, I'd still be on the schoolbus to Ganges High the next day. But she must have given them the mother of all sales pitches because, by the end of it, they were going around town telling anyone who would listen how their eldest daughter was going to be the first woman astronaut to go to Mars.

That's Lucy, in a nutshell. Then there's me. Little skinny brace-faced Hilde. I do ok in school, but nothing too spectacular. True, I like writing (as my constant ramblings will prove to you, I'm sure), and English is by far my strongest class. But apart from that, and maybe French, I'm really nothing to rave about. I hate math with a passion, and loathe phys ed even more, if that's at all possible. I can run fast, but I'm way too clumsy for track-and-field. I can swim ok, but I suck at holding my breath for too long, so there goes the swimming team idea, too. Volleyball, don't even go there. The ball weighs more than I do. 

Even my name sounds dorky in comparison. It's not even like you could shorten it to something cool, like hers. I admit I probably wouldn't want to be named Lucrezia either, but at least Lucy sounds ok. Hilde just sounds like some hairy-legged German nurse... or the wicked witch in all those fairy tales...

But apart from that, I can't really complain about my social life. I have friends, and we get along very well. They just happen to be not the really popular kids in school. We ride bikes a lot, catch frogs down at the creek, swap comic books... that sort of stuff. Ok, so we occasionally make fun of those boy-crazed Britney wannabes in our class who drool after Justin Timberlake and stuff... Alright, we have been known for pulling off the odd practical joke here and there... But come on, we're little angels, really. And don't tell me Kristy Kavanaugh did not deserve that slug in her lunch box, because she so did!

Alright, tell you what... Now that you know what kind of keeper I'm likely to be, I'll leave it up to you to figure out whether you still want to be my diary. Talk it over with your other diary buddies (I still think my secret diary network theory is not so out of whack...), then act accordingly. If I still find you here in my drawer tomorrow night, then I'll take it as a sign that you have accepted the mission of being Hilde Schbeiker's diary. If not, then I'm sure you'll have better luck with someone else.

Just one thing: if you do decide to high-tail it out to my sister's room, could you at least self-combust the first couple of pages that I wrote?  
Thanks, and hope to talk to you soon,

Hilde

***********************

__

Author's Note: I'll be honest with you guys, and tell you right off the bat that I don't know where this fic is going at the moment. This is the first Hilde-centric fic that I write, after all, and it's a major AU to boot. What I can tell you is that this is going to be a crossover with the Harry Potter universe (as the title suggests), and that the GW girls are probably going to play a more prominent role than the boys. Right now I'm so fascinated with the Lily-Petunia siblings rivalry aspect of HP that I am toying with the idea of actually using two diaries for this fic, one written by Hilde, and the other written by Lucy, to get both perspectives on the challenges that a young witch and her muggle sister would face trying to grow up without growing apart.

As such, any feedback and/or suggestions on where you think this fic should go (including the Recycle Bin, if that's the case) are hugely appreciated.  



	2. Empowerment

The Muggleborn Diaries  
Ch. 2 - Empowerment

August 1, 2003 

Dear Diary,

I guess since you're still here, even after three days (hey, I only wanted to give you some extra time to really think about it), I'll take it as a sign that you decided to stick around. That's good, I was really hoping for that... Especially since I'll need something to keep me from dying of boredom while I'm grounded for the next century or so! Oh, but man, was it worth it...

I'm telling you, my parents are totally over-reacting! I know that they're really into the whole no-fighting, violence-is-bad thing, and on most days I'd actually agree with them. But seriously, that jerk had it coming, and the fact that it was little skinny me, who finally taught him a lesson, makes it all the more perfect. It was, quite simply, the highlight of my summer. A very empowering moment...my mom's very fond of that word, and I'd never quite given it much thought before, but boy, today I felt it in all its glory!

Alright, I'll back up and start from the beginning, since you're probably wondering what exactly I'm talking about here.

The jerk in question is one Demian Dingle, grade 7 for the past two years in a row (yeah, real winner, that one...). There are only two things one really needs to know about him. One, he's a bully. Two, his IQ is inversely proportional to his size. And he's flippin' huge. Alright, that's three... but that's basically him in a nutshell. He's always bossing the younger kids around, wrecking their toys just for kicks, calling girls nasty names and such. He's baaad news, but everyone keeps making excuses for him because his mom's sick a lot and his dad's never really home. Well, I'm sorry, but that doesn't give him a license to start beating up whoever he pleases and act like a complete savage.

So anyway, I guess today he figured Jamie, Sarah and I'd be his suckers-du-jour. After all, we're not exactly an intimidating bunch. Jamie's really soft-spoken, he's kind of small for a boy, and he carries an inhaler all the time because he tends to get asthma attacks because of his allergies. Sarah is taller and quite athletic, but it's not like she'd be able to hold her own against a brute like Dingle. What's she gonna do, floor him with her super ballerina kick? And then there's me... weighing maybe 50 pounds soaking wet. 

The school bus had just dropped us off after day-camp, so we decided to stop by the candy store. I'd spent my whole week's worth of allowance on jelly beans and Sour Patch Kids (I love the watermelon ones!), while Sarah had gotten a bunch of gummy bears, and Jamie had loaded up on blue whales and squirmies (they look like worms, but they're darn tasty!). So naturally, Dingle figured he'd follow us around, wait until we were out of the village, beat the you-know-what out of us, and make away with our goodies. So here we were, totally clueless, riding our bikes back to Sarah's place, when he shows up and starts teasing us. 

He starts calling Jamie a wussy boy just because he hangs out with Sarah and me (honestly, the dude just has good taste in company... something that can't be said for most boys I know). Then, seeing as we just keep going and pay him no mind, he decides to ram into Sarah's bike and push her into a blackberry bush. Ouch.

She starts bawling (rightfully so, those thorns are nasty...); Jamie, who's had a secret crush on her since kindergarten, jumps to her defense and rams his own bike into Dingle's shins, hoping that'll do some damage. Nothing. The behemoth swats him like a fly and starts laughing his ass off when Jamie lands sprawled on his back. By now, I can hear him getting wheezy (he's really not supposed to exert himself, or get upset, because that usually triggers an attack), and he reaches for his inhaler. Meanwhile I'm helping Sarah out of the blackberry bush, so I miss what's going on until I hear Jamie cough and wheeze, "Give it back, give it back". I turn around and Jamie's jumping up and down, really red in the face and just about ready to pass out, while Dingle holds his inhaler out of his reach and shoves him around with his other arm.

That was it, I just saw red. Mom often tells me that I'm too impulsive for my own good, and normally I'd agree that charging against a giant like Dingle when one's my size is not exactly a brilliant idea. But I guess at that point I was way more mad than I was scared. So I launched myself towards him, hoping that, if anything, I'd jostle him enough to drop the inhaler. I didn't even get as far as thinking that he was going to kick my ass into oblivion, when something totally bizarre happened. He stumbled back a couple of steps, then turned and looked around startled, as though something invisible had just given him a good shove. 

Now, I was still at least 3 feet away from him. Sarah was crouched over by her bike, still bleeding from her scratches, and Jamie was too out of breath to do anything but snatch the dropped inhaler and suck at it for dear life. And no one else was around. Then get this... I take another step towards him, and he stumbles back some more, as if he'd just gotten another push. By now he's getting pretty panicky, and I probably should have been freaked out too, I mean, here's this big, fat bully being pushed and shoved around by some invisible force, and I'm, like, right there at arm's length. What if this thing starts picking on me next, right? But I keep going instead, one more step forward, and Dingle gets another shove... and I'm starting to wonder whether maybe I'm doing that. 

It's not like I'm a big believer in the supernatural and stuff like that, but I do admit that I've often wondered what it would be like if one day I got up and suddenly developed some kind of superpower like, I dunno, telekinesis, or super-human strength, or making myself shift shape. Ok, so I watched the X-Men movies one too many times... So anyway, I'm bound and determined to at least make the best of it for as long as this thing lasts, and I start literally marching towards Demian, still a good couple of yards from him. He starts clueing in, too, that I'm somehow connected to the invisible force, and starts yelling at me to stop it, except his voice comes out like a really high-pitched, frightened, girly wail. 

Who'd have thought, big tough Demian Dingle, frightened of little tiny Hilde Schbeiker. I cast one glance at the duck pond off the trail at the side of the road, the water all nice and slimy, and I must have gotten this really evil grin, because next thing I know, Demian tries to run off screaming. 

And then, something even better happens. That same force that was pushing him around now grabs him by the scruff of his neck (I'm not kidding you, it totally happened!), and he's flailing his arms trying to get away, but can't move a step, as though he's being pulled back. I give another nudge to direct him towards the marsh, and he stumbles along, according to plan. By now, he's crying for his mommy, and I guess I start feeling a little bad for him, but not too much. He's still a jerk, and I just tell myself that I'm actually doing him a favour by teaching him a valuable lesson. 

Nonetheless, I decide to end the punishment swiftly and memorably. I put my hands out in front of me, and give the air a push, like I've seen my dad do when he practices his tai-chi. I really don't know how it occurred to me to do that, it just kind of came out that way, as though it were the most natural thing in the world... or maybe it just looked cool. And, get this, Demian literally lifts off the ground and splashes spread-eagle into the pond like a ton of bricks (don't worry, the water's only knee-deep, and it's mostly muck anyway).

When I get back to my bike, Sarah and Jamie are looking at me like I've suddenly sprouted a second head, and there's this really awkward silence for a while, and I start to wonder whether what just happened freaked them out so much that they're now scared of hanging out with me, like I'm some kind of dangerous mutant (again, that happens to every single character on X-Men). Then Jamie blurts out,  
"Whoa, dude... that was, like, beyond cool! That's better than super-hero stuff, how'd you do it?"

And Sarah limps over and gives me a hug and says,   
"You rock, girlfriend!",   
like I just did something incredibly awesome. I know I'm going to sound like a big sap right now, but this is the kind of stuff that shows you who your real friends are. They still like me, and I just know that we're going to be friends forever. Plus, I kicked Demian Dingle's ass! Yeah!

Ok, so it wasn't all sunshine and puppies when Mrs. Dingle showed up on our doorstep with a bandaged-up Demian in tow, just when we were sitting down to dinner. She started ranting and raving to my parents about how I brutalized her poor son, who probably just wanted to make conversation and be our friend (yeah, my butt...). And you could totally tell that my mom and dad were looking back and forth between me and Mrs. Dingle and Demian, trying to keep a straight face, thinking that the woman must surely be delusional. 

Lucy gave me the one-eyebrow-lift (that's the expression she does when she's skeptical), and whispered, "You really beat him up?!", and I said nothing, and just grinned, feeling quite proud for standing up for myself the way I did, and she looked awed to say the least (which, coming from G.I. Jane herself, is quite something), and said,   
"Damn, girl... You gotta teach me some moves before I go back to school..."

So, yeah, here you have it... the highlight of my summer. My mom's just finished lecturing me up the wazoo, and dad's locked my bike in the tool shed, where it's going to stay until further notice. I am also to go to Mrs. Wigglesworth's daycare for all of next week, instead of day-camp. Oh, the humiliation... Daycare's for little kids... I'll be surrounded by a bunch of five-year-olds, rather than hanging out with kids my age. If word of it gets out to my classmates, they'll never let me live it down. Oh, but I bet you Demian won't be picking on us any time soon...

  
_Author's Note: I do not own Hilde Schbeiker, or Lucrezia Noin, or any Gundam Wing character, for that matter. I do not even own the Harry Potter concept and characters that will soon be introduced. I am just borrowing them for good, clean fun. I promise I'll return them as good as new... Please don't sic any scary lawyers on me._

_Also, thank you very much to Firefly for her encouraging review! Don't worry, I purposely set the timeline in such a way that Harry's generation will be just old enough to show up at Hogwarts... as teachers!_


	3. Serving the Sentence

The Muggleborn Diaries  
Ch. 3 - Serving the Sentence

August 4, 2003  
Dear Diary,

It's 6:00AM and I can't sleep any more. It's a strange mixture of fear, curiosity, and even some excitement. Today will be my first day of serving my sentence at Mrs. Wigglesworth's daycare, and it might not be as bad as I expected after all. I had an interesting conversation with Lucy yesterday as we were weeding around the tomato plants, safely away from my mom's earshot. She said that she had done a whole summer at Mrs. Wigglesworth's just before starting grade 7.

That in itself was pretty shocking news, as I had no recollection whatsoever of Lucy ever being punished for anything. Let alone punishment severe enough to last an entire summer... Perfect Kid, remember? But apparently she had quite the little business venture going on, selling homework services to her classmates all through grades 5 and 6. Which is how she could afford to buy all those fancy models of Mobile Suits. Paper route, my ass...

Anyway, eventually mom busted her when they bought the new computer and had to move all the files from the old one, and she found this neatly organized, password-protected spreadsheet of all my sister's "clients", which basically told the whole story. Which classes she did their homework for, complete with dates of assignments, grades achieved, and payment received.

Did I mention my mom used to be a software engineer before packing it all in and moving to Saltspring to teach yoga? So she's definitely not above hacking into her own kids' files. I'll have to keep that in mind for future reference...

With a little digging, she also found the other folders, one for each client, where Lucy would save all the custom work like essays, book reports and such, indexed by class and date. Lucy told me she used to type everything out on the computer, and all her clients had to do was copy it down in their own handwriting, maybe drop the odd spelling mistake here and there to make it look all the more genuine. As she told me all this in half whispers in the vegetable patch, she had all the airs of someone who knows she did something despicable, but was still damn proud of it, if only for the gall and entrepreneurial skills it took to pull it off for so long. And, as much as I despise people who cheat to get ahead, I couldn't help being intrigued by my sister's dirty little secret.

As it turns out, dad still doesn't know anything. Which explains why I never had any clue either... Mom can be shrewd and practical about stuff like that, whereas dad would have gotten into a righteous rage, ranting and raving about justice, and playing fair, and standing proudly by one's conscience instead of bowing to the power of money and feeding the parasites of the system. Or something like that. He's every bit the idealist that he was as a college student, when he met mom at an environmental rally to save their neighbourhood nudist beach (I kid you not!).

So mom confronted Lucy, firmly but very discreetly, because Lucy could have gotten suspended if something like that ever came out. And if there is one thing that Lucy fears most of all else in the world, it's failure, academic or otherwise. I mean, it's not like it's going to kill you to not get top marks in a test every once in a while: look at me, for crying out loud! But I guess she never really had the chance to figure it out for herself... And for that, I do worry about her, because the longer she waits to find out that she can get back up and try again, the harder it's going to hit her. She's only telling me now because her school's half-way around the world, and besides I have nothing to gain from telling anyone even if I did want to use it as a bargaining chip. Which, of course, I am not going to do because that would just be plain slimy of me.

Anyway, mom made her destroy all the evidence, donate all proceeds (which she had already spent, and had to make up from her allowance and paper route for the next year) to a charity of her choice, and swear solemnly that she would never again demean another classmate by helping them cheat. She also told her she would be monitoring all her computer access, including e-mail, MSN, the whole works... to make sure she didn't start up any other ethically questionable business ventures. And, as soon as the summer break started, she would be going to Mrs. Wigglesworth's daycare instead of the environmental day camp that she had hoped for.

So, out of all this, the good news is that Mrs. Wigglesworth has enough on her hands with the under-5 crowd to be in any mood to baby-sit 11-year-old girls. While it's true that I have to remain on the premises and not wander off on my own or sneak away to join my friends at camp, I can pretty much do whatever I want while I'm there. I can read books and comics, listen to CD's on my diskman, write in my diary, doodle, paint, and so on... As long as I don't require other 11-year-olds to keep me from dying of boredom, and as long as I don't mind the noise, I'll be fine. And, if I get really bored, I can always lend a hand to Mrs. Wigglesworth, who I've been assured will be more than willing to oblige. So, really, if I wanted to, I could make the whole experience into the ultimate hands-on babysitting boot camp.

Which, incidentally, is what Lucy decided to do after the first couple of weeks of sulking around. In fact, by the end of the summer, she had gathered enough experience in childcare to start supplementing her paper route money with babysitting, so that she never really missed the lost income from the homework business. Parents, after all, pay a lot better than kids can. Which, all things considered, must have been exactly what my mother was aiming for, and goes to show that the woman truly is a genius in her own right. Sadistic, but a genius nonetheless.

So I've made up my mind. I could whine and complain till I'm blue in the face, but I'm going to suck it up instead and make the most of it. Mom said I need to learn patience and the ability to control my temper, that I am too driven by my emotions, and need to think before jumping into action and damn the torpedoes (whatever that means). She said bravery is a virtue, and I have no shortage of it, but without the wisdom to channel it properly, it turns into bravado and foolishness. And, as long as I keep acting foolishly, she has no choice but to treat me like a little girl and send me to little kids' daycare. As embarrassing as this is, knowing that everyone in my entire school will find out sooner or later (man, Kristy Kavanaugh is going to act like she won freaking American Idol...), mom actually does have a point. What she does not know yet is that I am bound and determined to prove her wrong and show everyone just how responsible and grown-up I can be when I set my mind to it. And this is exactly my chance to do it.

Tykes & Trykes Daycare, here I come!

August 5, 2003  
Dear Diary,

Too exhausted to write. Pounding headache from hell just won't go away. Lucy said little kids can smell fear, and will feed on a caregiver's insecurity like a pack of rabid wolves. Going to go to bed early and call it a day. Thank God it's just a week and not the rest of the summer...

August 6, 2003  
Dear Diary,

Remind me never to bring out the finger paint ever again. I just wanted them to be quiet for just five minutes... That's not asking for much, is it? Kids on a sugar high... finger paint... very bad combination! It was all going pretty well, all things considered, until Joshua got frustrated with his dinosaur not looking as nice as Kyle's, and flung his paint at his face. Then of course, he had to retaliate, but ended up splashing it all over Melody's hair instead. Then it all went downhill from there. It took me for ever to scrub all that stuff off the walls, the floor, the kids' hair and faces... My Wolverine tee-shirt is pretty much good for the garbage now.

Needless to say, when Miranda (that's Mrs. Wigglesworth, by the way, and she's actually pretty cool for a grown-up) saw all the mess after putting the twins down for their nap, she was not impressed. But we rounded up all the little devils, scrubbed them clean with the garden hose in the backyard, and sealed up the art room so that we could clean up after they were gone.

It took us a whole hour to get the room back into presentable shape. She ended up driving me home, so she could explain to my parents why I was an hour late coming home. And then something wonderful happened. She told my mom what excellent help I've been, and how hard I work, and that she really appreciates having such a responsible, mature young lady to help her out with the little ones. And the look on my mom's face was simply priceless.

All I need to do now is keep up the good work until Friday.

August 7, 2003  
Dear Diary,

I am getting used to the various degrees of high-pitched screaming in my ears. The peanut butter and jelly fingers all over my clothes, however, I'm still working on. Lucy said that all through her stint at the daycare, she just wore stuff that she didn't really care about because it's gonna be covered with all sorts of stains by the end of it.

Saw Sarah and Jamie today. They stopped by the daycare on their way home from day camp. Both said the place just isn't the same without me, though I know they had a great time because today was supposed to be the trip to the SPCA to play with the puppies and kittens. They said that Dingle now avoids them like the plague, and is very careful not to bully other kids while either of them are anywhere within earshot.

Sarah looked all smug and self-satisfied, so after a while I had to ask what's up. She was all coy for a while, saying it was nothing and such, then we finally coaxed it out of her. It looks like Kristy Kavanaugh found out right away why I'm not at camp this week, and has been going around telling everyone that my parents must have finally figured out that I'm retarded and sent me to a little kids' daycare instead.

I was livid when Sarah told me, and was ready to show up at the little twit's doorstep tonight and give her an earful, but I let Sarah continue on first. And boy, am I glad I did.

She told me that Kristy walked up to her in front of the whole camp today, flanked as usual by her sidekicks Kaitlyn and Kayla (the KKK, as we call them... not that they have any clue what it means). She started acting all sugary-sweet, and said in her prissy little voice,

"Now that Hilde is in, like, daycare, she might even, like, be held back in school, like, who knows, so if you feel like you need to, like, make some friends your own age, you know, we can, like, hang out some time... We're gonna go to Pharmasave after camp today to try on some new nail polish, you're welcome to join us. They've got, like, really awesome colours."

Then Kaitlyn chimed in, "Yeah, Sarah, why don't you come along? You'd look really good in that new Creamsicle Burst colour they have..."  
"No," Kayla disagreed, "can't you see she's, like, totally a 'winter'? Listen to me, Sarah, you'd look really good in Cyber Blue, or even, like, a Frosty Lilac, but do yourself a favour, and stay away from, like, bright summer colours, like that T-shirt you're wearing today. They do nothing for your stringy blonde hair and pale complexion..." And with that, she gave a toss to her glossy chocolate-brown ringlets, as if to show off what a 'summer' kind of girl looks like, all bronzed and glowing.

Wouldn't they have loved that, to have their trio completed with the last season they needed... Because Kayla's obviously a summer (anybody with eyes, like, knows that, apparently...), Kaitlyn is an autumn, with her red hair and green eyes and Irish looks, and Kristy, honey-blonde hair and blue eyes, is all about spring colours like putrid pastels, and every possible shade of pink known to mankind. Eurgh...

I really didn't like where the conversation was going, so I got all sarcastic, and asked Sarah what she was doing here, when she could have been "like, at Pharmasave with her popular new friends, picking out, like, awesome winter colours to, like, paint her toenails and stuff..."

She made a face, and said, "Dude, I'd rather have my toenails surgically removed than to hang out with those twits. Do you have any idea how many times they use the word 'like', in an average sentence?"

Instead, she told me that she just thanked them politely in front of everyone, and said that she couldn't go because she was going to stop by here to see me after work.

"Work!" Kristy, Kayla and Kaitlyn squeaked all in unison, as if they're the Borg or something, a single working brain cell between the three of them. According to Sarah, they looked completely and utterly gobsmacked, like when Justin and Britney broke up.

"Yeah," said Sarah, all casually like it was common knowledge, and how could they be so out of the loop, "Haven't you heard? Hilde got a job at the Tykes & Trykes daycare... she started on Monday. I'm going to stop by and she's going to show me all the cute little babies that she looks after..."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Sarah is my best friend in the whole world and deserves the Oscar for Best Zippy Comeback of the Year. She sent them off with the tail between their legs, feeling like they were silly little girls playing dress-up, whereas Hilde Schbeiker was mature enough to have a real summer job. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall to see their faces...

_Author's Note:_ Ok, so no magic happening yet, apart from the Dingle episode. Don't worry, I have something planned that will leave no doubt that Hilde is indeed gifted in a very unusual way. That, and Mrs. Schbeiker will have to contend with a pesky little barn owl that won't stop hanging about Hilde's bedroom window...


End file.
